Rockstar has released an update for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on Steam, and it’s causing issues for some players of the game, most notably rendering save games unusable.

The update mirrors those released for the Xbox 360 and mobile versions of the game. It adds support for XInput controllers, including the Xbox 360 controller, and mouse steering is now enabled by default allowing for vehicles to be turned with a mouse movement. However, the biggest change is the removal of 17 music tracks.

Such is the state of music licensing, a game released several years ago and still supported or ported may no longer be able to use the music it originally shipped with. That seems to be the case for San Andreas, with Rockstar choosing to remove certain tracks rather than negotiate and pay a new licensing fee for them. The knock-on effect of that decision seems to be that save games made before the update was applied don’t load, they instead trigger a new game.

The good news is, the issue has been unofficially solved thanks to the work of gtaforums.com moderator Silent. You can download the SilentPatch, which allows old save games to work again as well as fixing other issues the game update introduced (aspect ratios, locked 30fps gameplay, mouse locking during play).

Music licensing is always causing problems in gaming, and it’s the reason a number of games haven’t appeared on digital download stores, e.g. previous generation PlayStation games on PSN. That’s unfortunate, and ultimately suggests that a music license should exist that is retained for the entire life of a game and its inevitable multiple re-releases/ports. But from the music industry’s perspective, there’s no profit in agreeing to do that.